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    Transparent Things
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    Transparent Things
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    Transparent Things
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    Transparent Things

    By Vladimir Nabokov

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The darkly comic Transparent Things, one of Nabokov's final books, traces the bleak life of Hugh Person through murder, madness, prison and trips to Switzerland. One of these was the last journey his father ever took; on another, having been sent to ingratiate himself with a distinguished novelist, he met his future wife.

    "As casual, as unpredictable, as eccentric and as daunting as Mr. Nabokov's genius." -Mavis Gallant, The New York Times Book Review

    Nabokov's brilliant short novel sinks into the transparent things of the world that surround this one person, to the silent histories they carry. Remarkable even in Nabokov's work for its depth and lyricism, Transparent Things is a small, experimental marvel of memories and dreams, both sentimental and malign.

    “The final effect is both chill and comic, the transparencies both beautiful and terrifying.” —The Times (London)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateFeb 16, 2011
    ISBN9780307787323
    Author

    Vladimir Nabokov

    Vladimir Nabokov (San Petersburgo, 1899-Montreux, 1977), uno de los más extraordinarios escritores del siglo XX, nació en el seno de una acomodada familia aristocrática. En 1919, a consecuencia de la Revolución Rusa, abandonó su país para siempre. Tras estudiar en Cambridge, se instaló en Berlín, donde empezó a publicar sus novelas en ruso con el seudónimo de V. Sirin. En 1937 se trasladó a París, y en 1940 a los Estados Unidos, donde fue profesor de literatura en varias universidades. En 1960, gracias al gran éxito comercial de Lolita, pudo abandonar la docencia, y poco después se trasladó a Montreux, donde residió, junto con su esposa Véra, hasta su muerte. En Anagrama se le ha dedicado una «Biblioteca Nabokov» que recoge una amplísima muestra de su talento narrativo. En «Compactos» se han publicado los siguientes títulos: Mashenka, Rey, Dama, Valet, La defensa, El ojo, Risa en la oscuridad, Desesperación, El hechicero, La verdadera vida de Sebastian Knight, Lolita, Pnin, Pálido fuego, Habla, memoria, Ada o el ardor, Invitado a una decapitación y Barra siniestra; La dádiva, Cosas transparentes, Una belleza rusa, El original de Laura y Gloria pueden encontrarse en «Panorama de narrativas», mientras que sus Cuentos completos están incluidos en la colección «Compendium». Opiniones contundentes, por su parte, ha aparecido en «Argumentos».

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    Reviews for Transparent Things

    3.5/5

    158 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The dull rainbow of a fog-dogged moon
      ..."he grunted and sighed in his sleep, dreaming of large unwieldy blocks of blackness"...
      I suppose it goes without saying that Nabokov's prose is brilliantly inventive, full of vivid turns of phrase and dark humour, but how does the book stack up as a whole? Well, Transparent Things is a novella about the life and memories of a seemingly average man. Hugh Person is his name, and this is the snapshot story of his stand-out moments which (as the short chapters reveal) are both strange and familiar, humdrum and disastrous.
      Transparent Things is a subtle book: the way Nabokov shows Hugh Person is surreal and sublime, yet also mundane and melancholic. All in all Transparent Things is an elegant work - a masterclass in the art of long short-story writing: understated, wistful, perceptive, deft, elusive and engaging -: definitely worth reading for the imaginative writing.
    • 2/5
      lost me a little, there, nabokov..
    • 5/5
      The extremely simple story of Hugh Person and his lover Armande is told with this wonderful, delicious examination of little snippets of life. From the 'ask me what I can do' ambitions of a humdrum life to the description of Swiss hot chocolate to its description of second-rate Swiss hotels- there is a savoring in the ordinary that shines through these pages. I read chapter-1 multiple times to make peace with 'transparent things', but it will still need more re-reads.After note: some of Nabokov's descriptions of human digestion are the most 'beautiful' yet biologically accurate I've read in literature.
    • 4/5
      The hero of "Transparent Things" is an editor for a publishing company. He travels to a town in Switzerland to meet with an author, and there becomes involved with a woman who becomes his wife. It is a very short, seemingly simple, story (104 pages), yet Nabokov manages to reveal layer upon layer of complexity in the telling of Hugh Person's love/life story. I know a book has something special when I begin reading again from the first page a second after finishing the last. Nabokov caught me off guard here. I usually am irritated by his erudite, yet disdainful playing with the reader. Maybe I am just getting used to his style...?
    • 2/5
      summer-2013, fraudio, published-1972, satire, switzerlandRead on August 13, 2013Transparent ThingsFraudio> rosado> Read by Christopher Lane.pub 1972summer 2013tbr busting 2013short story (105 pages)> murder and madnesstongue in cheeksleazy> paedophillic undertones againfrom wiki: This short novel tells the story of Hugh Person, a young American editor, and the memory of his four trips to a small village in Switzerland over the course of nearly two decades.Hugh Person is a Who? person, another dislikeable character that flooded in from the Nabokovian nib. Fantastic use of language showpieced in put-downs and acrid observations.5* Pale Fire4* Sebastian Knight3* Lolita3* The Eye2* Transparent Things4 likes
    • 4/5
      When Nabokov plays with words, the rest of us benefit for it. Short, but thick. Go through it multiple times, to (1) savor Nabokov's masterly use of language and (2) find out what on earth is going on here.
    • 4/5
      While with some authors one might get away with less than full attention, with Nabokov it's almost like a prerequisite for the reader to have a single-minded concentration, lest you miss his train of thought or his unique way of expression. Almost always it's like intellectual exercise. This book's title, "Transparent Things", does mean just that at first, as the author focuses on the history of some random "objects" in the story, but Nabokov doesn't stop there: his protagonist and those around him become "transparent" too - no less would be expected of him. The book starts on a rather lugubrious note, and with some dark sarcasm the author does lighten it up in the middle, but all in all, it's a life of agony on display. This one was a bit too heavy for me.
    • 4/5
      It is one of the last novels written by Nabokov. The novel is the antithesis of the title- nothing is transparent, self explanatory, clear or simple. The motivation guiding people is equally mysterious to an individual as it is to others judging his behaviour. The mystery of being or not being is profoundly locked and closed to our understanding.The plot is relatively simple. We accompany Hugh Person, an editor of an American publishing house, during his four consecutive visits to Switzerland. The style is typical for Nabokov, and typical to many modern East European writers: philosophising, aphoristic, poetic and at the same time self mocking and ironic. Since I am reading Milan Kundera at the same time, I see an uncanny similarity between the two in both style and narration technique. Another writer that comes immediately to mind with a very similar technique is Stanislaw Lem.
    • 5/5
      For me, this slender volume is notable much more for its virtuoso display of Nabokov's magnificent literary style than for its particular story. From the back-cover description by Martin Amis, "Transparent Things revolves around four visits of the hero - sullen gawky Hugh Person - to Switzerland . . . [who later] makes a lone sentimental journey to wheedle out his past... [through] several strands of dream, memory and time."The overall story floats in and out, in non-linear sequence, in imagination and in reality, and in the past, present and future, including even the afterlife. In fact, being Nabokov's next to last novel, it briefly collects and develops ideas of the afterlife that have flitted through previous novels, and have been of interest to him ever since the simple religious beliefs of his mother that he described in Speak Memory.A chapter from the hereafter(!) describes how the effects of an unknowable and unprovable afterlife might nevertheless surround us, completely unnoticed, during our entire lives and how they just might influence events in the here and now, even though certainly never determining the course or outcome of any event.It is an intriguing philosophical speculation that Nabokov puts to the reader. But, more to the point, we finally see (but only after rereading and rethinking, of course!) how cleanly he has woven the speculation into his story and how, indeed, it finally does affect the outcome. It is as transparent as clear glass that one can finally see only by looking at it.